Steve Brill’s irresponsible advice to America’s education writers

Here’s the question I should have asked Bedford author Steve Brill after his speech at the Education Writers Association dinner tonight in the House of Flags at the University of Pennsylvania.

“What planet are you on to encourage education writers to wander around the halls of local schools? Are you nuts? Adults don’t wander around any schools after Columbine.”

Brill made his remarks at the 65th annual EWA conference, which was kicked off with Delaware Gov. Jack Markel talking about the Common Core and Wall Street Journal national education reporter Stephanie Banchero sharing her secrets about writing enterprise stories on the fly.

Brill said the trouble with education writers today was that they were spending too much time at the office.

“What I would do is get up and walk into schools,” he said. “What are you afraid of? I’d go into schools like I’d go into a courtroom when I was at American Lawyer, to I’d find a story. I’d wander around schools and talk to people.”

There is no wandering about in schools these days, and for Brill to suggest it at a meeting of education writers is the height of irresponsibility.

Fifteen died in the fusillade at Columbine High on April 20, 1999. Three died at Chardon High School, Chardon, Ohio on Feb. 27, 2012. Columbine still resonates. The blood is barely dry from Chardon. Education writers who don’t respect the security needs of schools will end up in trouble.

I’d love to see how much wandering he’d do at Fox Lane High in Bedford.

Brill’s comparison of the courtroom to the school house was preposterous as well. I’ve covered both courts and schools during my 35 years in journalism. They are such different public settings for journalists, with such different rules. Courtrooms are public because the proceedings of the criminal justice system are designed to be held in public. Of course Brill could wander the halls of the courthouse, in the public arena, meeting his lawyer chums during his heyday with American Lawyer.

The school house differs marked from the courtroom. Education is a mostly private matter. It is not designed for public viewing. It’s teachers and students, alone, in a room.It’s not public at all. It’s even a huge deal now that teachers will be observed twice a year.

I live in Mahopac, in the same regional education district as Brill, 25 miles northwest of Brill’s woodsy spread in Bedford. There’s a Putnam County sheriff’s deputy who greets me at the door at Mahopac Middle School when I come to drop off the lunch my son left at home. The uniformed cop has a desk in front of the main office and his cruiser is parked right outside the door. Wandering is prohibited here.

When I visit Mahopac High School to drop off my son’s ski gear, I report my business at the guard house. A woman manning the booth instructs me to park by the entrance.

At the school house door, I present my identification to a woman at the security station. She types my data on a keyboard, and I get a sticker that certifies me for passage down the hall and around the corner to Gold House, where I drop off the ski bag. On my way, I pass two elderly women at desks by the girl’s room, with mobile phones and walkie-talkies at the ready.

How would Brill suggest I wander here?

Why on Earth would Brill suggest that education writers in post-Columbine America wander around schools anywhere in America?

Brill’s comparison of the courtroom to the school house was preposterous as well. I’ve covered both courts and schools during my 35 years in journalism.. They are such different public settings for journalists, with such different rules. Courtrooms are public because the proceedings of the criminal justice system is designed to be held in public. Of course Brill could wander the halls of the courthouse, in the public arena, meeting his lawyer chums during his heyday with American Lawyer.

The school house differs marked from the courtroom. Education is a mostly private matter. It is not designed for public viewing. It’s teachers and students, alone, in a room.It’s not public at all. It’s even huge deal now that teachers will be observed a couple of times a year.

Veteran journalist David McKay Wilson has written about public affairs for more than 30 years, including 21 years at The Journal News, and several years as a regular contributor to The New York Times. A Sharfman Fellow in economics at Brandeis University, Wilson was honored by the Education Writers Association in 2010 for his analysis of economists’ growing role in U.S. education policy and in 2012 for his reporting on suburban schools and cheating by those who administer standardized tests.

2 Comments

And if I saw you wandering around my child’s school without a sticker, I would report you post-haste…
But, is it possible the speaker wasn’t being literal?

There are plenty of ways to get into the meat of education: PTO meetings (they know EVERYTHING), school board meetings, public events, after school events. Perhaps he meant wandering around in a figurative sense. Although I guess the parallel with courtrooms may squash that idea…...

He was comparing it to the courthouse, which is a really bad comparison. You can certainly find out lots by talking to people, but showing up unannounced at schools, and wandering about them, in my experience, is not the way to do that. – DAvid Wilson